Aspirations of Retailers and Visitors Towards the Regeneration of Declining Streets in Cities

Abstract

City Centre retail spaces are integral to the sustainability of cities, and within this hierarchy secondary shopping streets, which act as hubs for local communities and businesses, have become isolated. There is now a recognised need for academic studies to reverse these trends in these areas, especially in a UK context. This work analysed and compared stakeholders' perceptions of urban interventions in a declining secondary retail area in Southampton. The investigation was based on interviews and surveys of stakeholders, as well as observational studies enhanced through analysis of secondary data.This paper presents the outcomes of such investigations addressing the perceptions and behaviours of retailers and visitors, focusing on where these are aligned or divided. The overall results reveal that retailers are more concerned with 'static' improvements, such as parking provisions or building façade improvements, while visitors are concerned with active and spatial improvements, with street level interventions being the most important. The results also show that (a) whilst retailers may believe that they understand what visitors require; they differ greatly and (b) many aspirations of retailers are costly or dependant on other businesses' intentions. Visitor's desires: include the reuse of vacant stores and creation of public space, which are far more viable, and can be enacted by governance. Such options should be trialled as a means to educate and improve understanding of less traditional interventions. The paper also provides input on ways to make these failing areas more sustainable through a shared vision and wide applicability.

How Attractive for Walking Are the Main Streets of a Shrinking City?

“…Furthermore, the utilitarian purposes (such as walking-through, meeting authorities, going to work or to school) were dominant in Ostrava, whereas shopping, spending free time or meeting friends were altogether mentioned by less than 40% of respondents, and were correlated with a lower visit frequency. Compared to findings of Turner et al [44] where entertainment and shopping were main visiting reasons, the low attractivity for leisure and the uninteresting small retail in this industrial city of Ostrava becomes more evident. Nonetheless, Ostrava and other medium-sized industrial cities need to maximize the morphological advantage of their historical centers which enable keeping activities in a concentrated space [1,27,33], to respond well at least to utilitarian purposes.…”

“…The dominant visiting frequency of once or twice a month is comparable to that recorded on retail streets in a similar-sized city but with a higher retail vacancy (i.e., Southampton, UK [44]). This low visiting frequency indicates worrisome conditions for main streets.…”

“…Parking and car access might be important for retailers [44], but in Ostrava they took advantage of their delivery access and left their cars parked in zones with pedestrian priority throughout the day (e.g., on S street). Although some residents had mixed opinions about parking, the informants used public transport most frequently (independent of residence, age or education), therefore providing more parking spaces in the city center of Ostrava is not needed.…”

“…They usually entail a wide variety of small retail and ensure easy pedestrian access to everyday goods and services [30]. Shopping on main streets is considered an activity of leisure and entertainment, contributing to lively and dynamic public spaces [29,44]. However, since the 1970s, shopping-malls and other peripheric big-box retailers, supported by car-centric urbanism, have become strong competitors to small commerce in city centers, weakening the latter [45][46][47][48].…”

“…Municipal governments aimed to improve the attractiveness of inner-city shopping areas, particularly through redevelopment of main commercial streets and pedestrianization [44][45][46]. To provide easy accessibility to pedestrians, the concepts of 'pedestrian zones' and 'car-free zones' were introduced.…”